Kudos to Vince Gill, who yesterday (9-8-13) emerged from the Muriel Kauffman Theatre in Kansas City to accost a slew of Westboro Baptist Church protesters outside, apparently protesting his appearance because he is married to Christian music artist Amy Grant. Both Vince and Amy Grant are divorced after previous marriages.

“Vince Gill, what in the world are you doing out here? More importantly, what are you doing with another man’s wife?” says one female protester as Vince walks amongst them, with an anti-Westboro bystander taping the incident with a smartphone. “I came out to see what hatred really looked like in the face,” Vince responds.

“Don’t you know that (you) are lucky that you don’t have the sign that says something about my wife?” Vince snaps back, and then says, “(Jesus) said a lot of stuff about forgiveness, about grace. You guys don’t have any of it.” Then Vice moves on, telling another protester that he’s seen him on TV before, and then calls him a “dipshit.” Before the video cuts off, Vince asks, “Are any of you Phelps’s, or are you guys like the ‘C’ team?

Gill is currently promoting his new album with steel guitar player Paul Franklin called Bakersfield. The duo switches off covering songs from Merle Haggard and Buck Owens from the heyday of the Bakersfield Sound.

Vince Gill was previously married to singer Janis Oliver from the country duo Sweethearts of the Rodeo. They married in 1980 and had one daughter, eventually divorcing in 1998. Amy Grant was previously married to Christian singer Gary Chapman. The couple married in 1982 and had 3 children, divorcing in 1999. Vince Gill and Amy Grant married in 2000, and have a daughter.

While I’m all about Vince Gill OWNING the WBC, do we have to give him two “GUNS” up? Is it really necessary to use guns in a kudo when thumbs have worked so well all these years? You bash Shooter (sometimes rightfully so), yet, just like Shooter, you feel the need to include guns in your metaphors. I’m not an anti-gun-nut by any stretch, but give the damn guns a rest, eh? There are enough of them out there without you needing to remind us.

I appreciate you coming to my defense Flynn, but he may not. Stories like this draw lots of traffic, and it’s not fair to assume that everyone knows this. I can understand how it can be taken the wrong way, so that is why I changed it.

I completely understand your concern. The “two guns up” was referencing the top grade I give to songs or albums I review on the site, and yes, it is a reference back to the online handle “Trigger” or “The Triggerman,” but it is in no way was meant to be a threat to anyone in this context or some glorified reference to guns. It is just a personalized way of giving my full approval. However, I can completely understand that with a story like this which will and has drawn many people to the site that will not understand the “two guns up” reference, it can be confusing.Sso I have simply changed it to “kudos.”

Having had personal threats of physical harm lobbed at me by Shooter and his toadies multiple times, including three incidences, including one traced directly back to Shooter, that named my specific address, I am very sensitive to this subject. Regardless of the intellectual disagreements, either between Westboro Baptist Church and Vice Gill, or Shooter and myself, violence and threats of violence are always immature, base, ignorant, and inappropriate, and only people who’ve never been victims, or had people close to them be victims of violence, need to have it explained to them why this is the case. Threatening violence is cowardly. Either enact the violence, or keep your mouth shut and show some respect to your fellow man.

This is also the reason I changed my handle from “Triggerman” to “Trigger” a while back.

I appreciate the reply, Trigger. And yeah, I’m a simpleton for not putting two-and-two together (derp). Having grown up in the Deep South and owning guns for hunting since I could tote one, I understand guns are part of country music culture. I’m not blind to that fact. But with everything going on in the world today, it would be nice to be able to read something innocuous that doesn’t reference guns.

As far as Shooter, I kept up with y’all’s back-and-forth briefly. I was a big fan of his until he devolved into his conspiracy theory/Alex Jones phase. It seems he spends more time attacking people on his Facebook lately than he does trying to maintain his fan base. He also, as you know, has made guns a big part of his promotions lately and that also left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I’m still proud to call Bryan, Ted, and John friends, but I just don’t see myself donating to his cause anymore. Sad.

Westboro Baptist aren’t nuts. They are money-seekers. They are hoping to enrage people in the guise of fanaticism and hope someone will physically harm them out of anger, in which they can pursue a legal suit. There’s a reason they bail on previously announced protests sometimes, and I can guarantee is it due to limited backlash on the part of reporting and social media prior to the proposed date.

Regardless, I find them disgusting and would love for them to simply disappear from the national spectrum.

I love Vince and saw him with PPL in 1980 and have been a fan ever since. But, truthfully, I am kind of disappointed he confronted them, as that just gives them some sense of importance and relevance. If people would just ignore them (I know it’s pretty hard) I think they’ll eventually go away, as they are attention whores and feed off of people’s negative reactions to them (like the true sociopaths they are). It’s time we all starved the beast, eh? Eventually they will get bored and go back to the rock they crawled out from under. There is nothing worse than feeling irrelevant and unheard, no matter how loudly you shout. When someone acknowledges and engages them, as Vince did, it just reinforces them and gives them a sense of power. Don’t give them what they want. Don’t even LOOK at them; they need to be treated as invisible. Seriously, they have gotten WAY too much media attention these past few years. When it stops, they will probably (hopefully) stop, because why bother if no one is paying attention?

I hate to say something as cliche as, “do it for the kids,” but there are plenty of teens raised in insular religious communities that are fed similar if less severe forms of bigotry and misinformation. Their only exposure to dissenting viewpoints is probably because of the internet. Seeing people, especially celebrities, criticize beliefs they were taught as fact can only help in broadening their worldview, even if in the end they stick with their original conclusions.

Simply ignoring instances of bigotry, misogyny, racism or any other social justice issue can easily be mistaken for tacit approval, so sometimes assholes need to be called out publicly for the benefit of society as a whole.

It’s great to see the kids growing up in these cults leaving so often recently, and at least as awesome to see guys like Vince calling them out on their antics. I guess it’s not as surprising given Ke$ha’s reputation, but she sent her backup dancers to do the same thing less than a month ago.

The Westboro nuts are reprehensible, especially the lewd, inflammatory, and absurd protests they do at the funerals of soldiers. I agree with an above commenter that much of what they do is motivated by money, hoping to win lawsuits and receive damages from municipalities that try to ban them, or people that might instigate a fight with them. However, lets be clear, from a Christian perspective, what Gill and Grant are engaged in IS adultery. With very few exceptions, none of which apply to Gill or Grant, a marriage cannot be annulled.

This is what I love about Vince Gill. Even when he’s telling someone off, he carries himself with class and dignity. I am a religious person and I support people who stick to their beliefs, but these people are on crack. Plain and simple. Who goes and attacks someone in public like that? Espeically when he didn’t do anything wrong. This is ridiculous on so many levels and yet he still kept his cool and handled it perfectly.

Love it. Great way to confront these folks. He wasn’t violent nor immaturely verbal with F-bombs, but he still showed a human side to himself as you could feel the blood pressure rising in him and I think the WBC folks could too, because they didn’t cross a line with a comment on Amy (and I think he really wanted one of them to).

He would have destroyed that “dipshit” if the guy would have made a move.

I agree giving the WBC any attention is to much, but you also have to get in the face of bullies sometimes. They quickly realized they wanted no part of Vince.

Vince is awesome. A bit pretty boy for most, but he could sing, play, write circles around 95% of anyone ever, and give a country music history lesson as good as Marty Stuart.

Vince gills doesn’t understand what being a Christian is all about: Jesus did not come to die so we can keep sinning and say and act as if sinning is ok! He came to show us that because he loves us, he willingly took our penalty of death upon himselfs so that we would no longer have to be slaves to sin and death and ultimately hell !!!! And instead we can now be filled with god’s very own spirit so that we can overcome temptations and sin!!!!!!! And yes, it is a daily walk as well with god himself and yes we may still make mistakes but a true Christian will not say he is not sinning when he is not , nor will he say he is sinning without the want to change! Vince obviously shows that he was committing adultery with Amy grant in his heart (if not yet physically) while both were married and both show no repentance nir t least even the acknowledgment of the fact that they are indeed adulterers and are the main culprits for the end of their previous marriages. In god’s eyes and the bible is clear: the unfaithful affair between Vince and Amy grant is wrong and sinful and anti-God . And to confront them by saying that they are sinning is not wrong. And it is good and loving to wish that they would repent and make things right according to how God sees fit, instead of their own ways . They are both misrepresenting lord Jesus and god and what it means to be a Christian!